Meeting between US secretary of state and Russian president signals mutual desire to maintain dialogue after relations were strained over UkraineJohn Kerry, the US secretary of state, has spent nearly four hours in talks with Vladimir Putin during a visit to the Russian president’s Black Sea residence in Sochi.Kerry’s plane landed in...

Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that if Russia abides by the Minsk protocol setting a ceasefire in Ukraine, sanctions enacted by the United States and European Union against Russia can be lifted. Speaking at a press conference in Sochi beside his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Kerry said that regardless of...

The EU is tackling its migration crisis on two major fronts, after roughly 1,800 people have died so far this year crossing the Mediterranean to Europe. Outside Brussels, foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini is pushing for a UN mandate to fight the deadly business of human traffickers in Libya, amid a pushback from Russia over the use of...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US State Secretary John Kerry laid wreaths and exchanged gifts during their meeting on Tuesday. The meeting between the Russian and US delegations in Sochi lasted for four hours, TASS news agency reports. Lavrov presented Kerry with a Victory Day t-shirt dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Second...

On the outskirts of the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, roadside billboards remind residents of the penalty for espousing “separatism”: prison terms of between five and seven years. A few miles further along the main road north are newly dug trenches, designed to conceal defensive tanks and heavy artillery. Further again are more lines of...